Considering the horrors audiences have been subjected to over the years — graphic torture in “Hostel,” the pea soup scene in “The Exorcist,” close-ups of Ray Liotta’s face — it’s amazing that jaded moviegoers are still capable of being shocked. Along comes Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” a movie so bizarre and offensive that it caused the crowd at Cannes to lose its collective junk. Four people supposedly fainted. There were loud boos and jeering, as well as laughter. One guy couldn’t even finish the text message he was rudely sending.

The film, out Friday, finds a couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) grieving for their dead son. They retreat to a remote cabin in the woods, where the wife goes bonkers. If you’ve read anything at all about the film, you probably know a couple things that await you: namely, genital mutilation and explicit sex.

Whether or not you see it, “Antichrist” is bound to raise some thorny questions. Here now, the only answers we (or anyone) can provide.

What the hell is it even about?

Er, even the director isn’t sure. Von Trier (“Breaking the Waves”) says he made it as therapy to pull out of a deep depression. “The script was finished and filmed without much enthusiasm, made as it was using half of my physical and intellectual capacity,” the not-so-humble director writes. “Scenes were added for no reason. Images were composed free of logic or dramatic thinking. They often came from dreams I was having.”

Yes, says Tony Timpone, editor of Fangoria. “The genital mutilation was like, ‘Whoa!’ ” he says. “That really was quite shocking and disturbing. It put it in the horror category alone.” Timpone also says he found the violence in “Antichrist” more disturbing than in something like “Saw,” because the gore in the von Trier film is done to disturb, not entertain. “I was squirming in my seat,” he says.